More and more funders and publishers require research data to be made available in appropriate repositories, but determining which repository to choose or what counts as an “appropriate repository” can take up a lot of time. What is a researcher to do?
Last year the American Geophysical Union (AGU) convened representatives of the international Earth, space and environmental science community to work on the Enabling FAIR Data project. In this project, standards are developed that will connect researchers, publishers, and data repositories to enable FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data on a large scale. This project aims to accelerate scientific discovery and enhance the integrity, transparency, and reproducibility of these data.
To enable FAIR data sharing, data need to be deposited in a repository that is taking steps to make data as open and FAIR as possible. This is not clear-cut because at this time, there is no such thing as a FAIR stamp – although the CoreTrustSeal certification provides a good indication. Under the auspices of the Enabling FAIR Data Project, AGU, re3data, and DataCite therefore decided to develop a new tool to assist researchers in finding an appropriate repository for their data.
And so, at the second stakeholder meeting in Washington DC last week, we were pleased to announce the arrival of Repository Finder: https://repositoryfinder.datacite.org.
Repository Finder allows researchers to search for repositories in which to deposit their data. For those who want guidance, Repository Finder offers a quick way to retrieve a set of results that meet the criteria recommended by the Enabling FAIR Data Project. These results will consist of repositories that are used by the community, provide open access to data, and use persistent identifiers. Should you not be able to find an appropriate repository or have additional criteria you want use, the tool also allows you to search through all the repositories in the re3data.org repository registry.
By building Repository Finder on top of re3data and by searching based on criteria (rather than showing a list of individual repositories), we’ve made Repository Finder extensible for the future. When information is added to the re3data registry, these sets of criteria will continue to retrieve updated results without expending additional editorial effort. This means you’ll always get the most relevant, up-to-the-minute results without needing to wait for an editorial cycle. In this first iteration, the only available set of recommended criteria are those from the Enabling FAIR Data Project, but as other publishers and funders come on board, we’ll be able to add their sets of criteria as well. This means that researchers will have one place they can go to find the right repository.
Try out Repository Finder and let us know what you think. As always, you can send your questions, comments, and suggestions to support@datacite.org.
